white man's burden

American  

noun

1. the alleged duty of white colonizers to care for nonwhite Indigenous subjects in their colonial possessions.

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White man's burden British  

noun

1. the supposed duty of the White race to bring education and Western culture to the non-White inhabitants of their colonies

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white man's burden Cultural  

1. A phrase used to justify European imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The phrase implies that imperialism was motivated by a high-minded desire of whites to uplift people of color.

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Etymology

Origin of white man's burden

After a poem of the same title by Rudyard Kipling (1899)

Example Sentences

Writing in 1907, the Indian nationalist Aurobindo Ghose was even harsher on lachrymose claims about the white man's burden.

From The Guardian • Jul. 27, 2012

Derived from a briefly exhibited drama called Heat Wave, the picture shows its hero bearing the white man's burden with superfluous fortitude and increasing its weight by disguising his nobility with sophomoric sarcasm.

From Time Magazine Archive

So when the war broke out, Japan shouldered not the white man's burden but the Brown Brother's and plunged in to police Asia.

From The Canadian Commonwealth by Laut, Agnes C. (Agnes Christina)

He did, however, vouchsafe the information that, whatever America might do, this country would not add Armenia to its existing share of "the white man's burden."

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 16, 1920 by Various

So he and his wife, as cheery and bright as though she were setting forth on her honeymoon, were going back to take up the white man's burden.

From The Congo and Coasts of Africa by Davis, Richard Harding